New Haven residents weigh in on progress of community policing model

William Kaempffer, Register Staff

Published
12:00 am EDT, Saturday, September 29, 2012

NEW HAVEN -- Police Chief Dean Esserman returned to the city nearly a year ago with a pledge to reinstitute meaningful community policing and repair the fractured relationship between officers and many residents in the city's poorest, largely minority, violence-plagued neighborhoods.

Since then, he has ordered the return of walking beats to every neighborhood, instructed beat officers to make "house calls" to check on crime victims, arrived at hospitals to support the families of homicide victims and stood with them at press conferences to announce justice through arrests.

The concept of community policing means different things to different people. The New Haven Register spoke with a cross-section of community members, leaders and activists to get their impressions of the state of policing in New Haven -- and whether community policing has gained any traction.

AMONG FRIENDS

Lisa Siedlarz is chairwoman of the SoHu Block Watch in the East Rock neighborhood. Since the Block Watch started, she has worked with six police chiefs and acting chiefs.

Walking beat Officer Ron Perry already was a familiar face in East Rock when his bosses convened a meeting with a jittery community about a latest rash of burglaries.

He wasn't a featured speaker but introduced himself to those who didn't yet know him, and made an offer: If residents go on vacation, they should let their neighbors know -- but also tell him, and he'd make sure to check on their house during his daily rounds.

"An offer like that really changes the perception not just of that one officer, but of the entire New Haven Police Department," said Siedlarz.

Five years ago, when she started SoHu, which stands for "South of Humphrey" Street, the relationship was more strained, although not terrible.

That was at a time when the department created a large, city-wide squad of officers tasked with saturating neighborhoods as crime spikes emerged. That came at the expense of some of the city's walking and bike beats. East Rock lost its bike cop.

The relationship has improved since then. Former Chief James Lewis wouldn't give back a walking beat, which he didn't view as an effective policing tool, but he was viewed as engaged and responsive. Under former Chief Frank Limon, Siedlarz said, that "kind of faded away."

Then Esserman came and gave back the beat cops.

While different chiefs have different styles, Siedlarz said, the neighborhood consistently has had strong district managers, New Haven's versions of precinct commanders. That has provided continuity through changes in administration, she said, and they always have been willing to "listen to us, hear what we have to say and try to accommodate us."

Since their return, the walking beats have been popular and the officers engaged and friendly, she said. One, if given the opening, will bend people's ears about his beloved beagles.

"They're very nice, very good interactions. They stop and say 'hi' to people," said Siedlarz.

The kindness has been returned. The beats don't have a nearby home base to, say, keep a packed lunch, so Siedlarz's brother, who lives on Eld Street, offered space in a refrigerator in his garage.

And Siedlarz has received positive feedback from many members of SoHu. "People will come to the meeting and say, 'I saw officer so-and-so today and we had a nice little chat.' I hear a lot of that."

UNCERTAINTY

Barbara Fair is a longtime community activist, critic of racial disparities in the criminal justice system and advocate for criminal justice reforms.

For Fair, the verdict is still out on whether relations between the community and the police department have improved.

"I don't want to say it can't happen. It happened under (police Chief Nick) Pasture so I know it can happen," she said, referring to the chief in the 1990s who first instituted a community policing model in New Haven. "But there's been so much damage, it will take some time to build it up.

"You can't treat people in a certain way for decades and expect it to change in a year. It takes time to build trust."

She said she recently was disheartened to learn that police planned to crack down on groups of youths riding bicycles, which the department said is in response to a string of street robberies involving gangs of kids on bikes attacking, assaulting and robbing people. The department is formulating a plan to target groups, stop them, identify them and even seize the bikes, if warranted. Inevitably, she said, the people who would be stopped and hassled would be kids of color. That aggressive tactic would serve only to deepen the rift with the community, she said, that the chief has said he wants to heal.

"We have enough of a disconnect with police and our young people. We don't want to implement another policy that makes it worse," she said.

Fair has worked for decades espousing criminal justice reform and has been a frequent critic of the department.

In her opinion, the solution to the problem isn't walking beats, a central plank in the city's community policing model, but a change in the policing culture. If officers leave the station and view every young black man as suspect, change will never happen.

Perceptions need to change on both sides, she said. Fair said she's holding out hope and believes in Esserman's intentions. She hasn't personally seen a marked difference in policing in the city, she said, but has been to enough meetings where residents express gratitude to officers for various good work that she assumes it is happening somewhere.

"So far, I don't see this friendly community policing officer," she said. "I don't."

EFFORTS RECOGNIZED

The Rev. James Manship is the priest at St. Rose of Lima Church in Fair Haven. His church has a large Latino population, including many people who are undocumented, and he advocates for their cause.

A family from St. Rose of Lima was ready to move out after their new upstairs neighbors brought with them drug dealing, loitering and fear. Police fixed it, said Manship.

He pointed to an effort of prevention through intervention.

"If there are known felons or people on probation, police just pay a visit to say hello," Manship said. In that case, police were informed of an issue, kept an eye on the house, and met with the landlord and then the tenants to strongly explain appropriate behavior.

The problems stopped.

Fair Haven has unique challenges with its significant population of people who are not legal residents and sometimes are victims of crime because they are viewed as easy targets. The district manager has well utilized his Spanish-speaking officers to build bridges, the priest said. Manship said police continue to visit the church to engage with the parish and reinforce that the department doesn't care about legal status if a person witnesses or is a victim of a crime. On the street, police haven't given any reason to distrust, but people are still apprehensive, he said.

"You can't completely eradicate that from the back of people's minds," Manship explained.

He supported the police department's efforts to crack down on a recent uptick of groups of kids on bikes robbing and assaulting people.

He viewed it as an effort to protect "hard-working people" from crime.

"I believe in Fair Haven," he said. "Police are participating. Police are very proactive."

CHANGES

Darrell Allick grew up "hustling" on the street and spent time in prison. After his brother's life was claimed by street violence in 2011, Allick started "Ice the Beef," an antiviolence organization aimed at preventing deaths in New Haven.

When kids hanging out outside the 24-hour store on Dixwell Avenue encountered police, it usually ended with a threat of arrest for trespassing if they didn't move along, Allick said.

He watched the familiar encounter take place recently.

"This time it was completely different. They were all out there talking," said Allick. "I see that all the time. I seen cops engaging with youth, talking to youth while they play basketball. Just talking."

In his view, the walking beats, reinstituted last year, make a big difference. When he was growing up, a squad car would drive by occasionally. That afforded kids with time -- time to talk, concoct plans to settle some score, pick up a gun to do it.

Now, as walking beats focus on known hot spots, no one knows when an officer will turn the corner.

Changing a police culture with 400 officers in the ranks will be difficult, Allick said. In his mind, there always will be cops who automatically assume a kid hanging on a corner is dealing drugs. "You want every police officer to be nice and friendly. Every police officer isn't going to be like that," he said. At the same time, to judge all cops by the actions of a few "is not fair."

The overall community, like police officers, is tired of violence, he said. The police department has made arrests in 15 killings this year. About half of this year's homicides have been solved. The rest are from older cases.

Allick said he believes community stakeholders and organizations like his play a role, but he "didn't want to take anything away from police" working hard to solve cases.

"We do have 'no snitching' rules. People are still scared, but we're working on that," he said. The community as a whole feels better when police arrest killers, he said.

He said Esserman has lived up to his promise so far. The walking beats are a good start and make a difference. "It's more than watching and patrolling, but also interacting with the community. Now we have an opportunity to get to know them, to get to trust them all over again."

The community can't judge the department on past sins, he argues. "The community hates to give police credit. The things that they did in the past, you can't hold that against them year after year."

MORE TO DO

Rabbi Eli Greer lives in the Edgewood neighborhood. His family runs an Orthodox Jewish school and is a major property owner in the neighborhood.

"We're definitely better off this year than we've been in the last two years," said Greer. But people shouldn't read too much into that, he said, considering last year the city was "hemorrhaging in a war zone" with an absentee police chief before Esserman.

"It's fair to say that (last year's violent crime rate) is not a barometer residents should use to measure crime," he said.

Greer said Esserman has done a good job of reinstituting "effective" policing in the city.

The department has its hurdles. Even as the city works on education reform, its past failure to educate a generation of youth created a disproportionate at-risk population that police now have to deal with, Greer said.

One thing that concerns Greer is the mass exodus of veteran officers who have retired because of concern about the expired labor contract, because they don't share Esserman's policing ideology, because of internal politics -- or a combination of such factors.

"We should be keeping our 20-year veterans who have a huge skill set," Greer said.

He views community policing as more than walking beats and attending meetings with updated crime statistics.

In his view, to implement modern community policing, there has to be greater partnerships, both technologically and on the ground. His suggestion is to build on a model in Baltimore, among other places, involving community patrols.

In New Haven, perhaps community volunteers could walk the beat with a New Haven cop. That would bolster community engagement and also provide a "treasure trove" of information to police from people whole actually live in a neighborhood.

"In order to do proper community policing, the community needs to volunteer their time," he said.

Five years ago, Greer and supporters started an armed neighborhood patrol, claiming police had abandoned them to thugs. The hybrid model, he said, would be unarmed citizens walking or biking "alongside police officers who are dedicated to these neighborhoods."